Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

This bibliography by Gail Hornstein, Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College  and author of a distinguished biography of Freda Fromm-Reichmann (To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Free Press, 2000), can be download by following the link above. The link to the bibliography is at the bottom of the page. 

What is a risk? Well, it is usually seen as any action or potential action that may serve as a threat or danger to life and limb, for oneself or to another. ‘Risk’ carries a negative connotation. Something ‘bad’ may happen. In a larger sense, ‘risk’ refers to a change of state or status. This may be positive or negative. Really, we are talking about the process of being alive. To be at risk is to risk to be alive. At any moment the consequence of being alive entails sudden unforeseen changes which may enhance or endanger health.

By adopting a psychoanalytic perspective - and acknowledging that this is only one of many ways of approaching the question of the books’ popularity, or notoriety - I hope to show that the extraordinary success of the Harry Potter books is due, in part, to the universal phantasies they contain, in particular, those deriving from the Oedipal period.

My initial idea for this paper was to discuss some psychoanalytic metaphors for mental space - Freud’s vesicle, Bion’s container, Winnicott’s transitional space, Steiner’s psychic retreats and Meltzer’s claustrum - in terms of the philosophical concepts of being and nothingness. I intended to focus on Sartre’s idea that: “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm” (Sartre, 1943, p21) to illustrate the connection between nothingness, as an unconscious mental state in which space and time have no domain, and being, which requires psychic space to be in.

Psychoanalytic reflections on the effects of the right-wing violence (1974-76) and dictatorship (1976-83) in Argentina on the inner worlds of people in an analytic group in Buenos Aires. It was originally published in French under the title Violence d'etat et psychanalyse. Paris: Bordas, 1989. This essay is chapter one of the collection. Her interpretations and conclusions are of considerable general interest.

I was asked to give a talk a the Tavistock Centre in a series sponsored by CONFER  on 'Power in the Clinical Relationship', on 25 November 2002. My brief was  concentrate on the therapist's power, in particular, how to deal with conflicts of values between the patient and the therapist. I have drawn to some extent on my other writings.

Harry M. Anderson Metapsychological Formulation: A New Scientific Method of Psychoanalytic Clinical Research and Practice

Many claim that Metapsychology is of no use in the clinical situation and should be abandoned. The author's researches show that this attitude is the result of an incomplete scientific evolution of the theory. If enabled to mature, it provides a sound foundation for the creation of a true science of clinical research and practice.

Theodore M. Brown The Rise and Fall of Psychosomatic Medicine

T. M. Brown is an historian of medicine at the University of Rochester in New York State. He here offers an overview of the history of psychosomatic medicine in America, inspired by psychoanalytic thinking and superceded by reductionist models.

For a period in the 1960s and 1970s, the Medical School of the University of Rochester in upstate New York was a very active centre in the development of theory and experimental research in psychosomatic medicine. T. M. Brown is an historian of medicine at that university and has researched the history of the approach -embracing biological, psychological and social levels - which was developed there under the leadership of George W. Engel.

George Engel was arguably the most original, empirical  and sophisticated researcher in the history of psychosomatic medicine. He certainly took the widest view of the subject, embracing the biological, psychological and social levels of explanation. Trained as an experimentalist, he united this approach with psychoanalysis and, most notably, conducted a series of experimental studies on a young girl who had a gastric fistula and ulcerative colitis. Secretions could thereby be correlated with emotional states. This research became the foundation for an approach to all of medicine whereby fear of loss was seen, along with other factors, as a fundamental cause of the clinical manifestation of disease. The historian of medicine Theodore M. Brown here tells the story of his career as emblematic of the rise and fall of the psychodynamic approach to psychosomatic medicine in America.

Karl Figlio 'Registration and Ethics in Psychotherapy'

Karl Figlio, Director of the University of Essex Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies gave a most interesting paper to a conference on debates about registration of psychotherapists in Britain, mounted by the British Confederation of Psychotherapists in June 1999. It is published in The British Journal of Psychotherapy.

Robert Langs  'A Just Peace for the Freud Wars'

R. D. Hinshelwood   'Alienation: Social Relations and Therapeutic Relations'

Felix de Mendelssohn  'Building a Bridge to Heaven: Notes on the Construction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Tower of Babel'

R. D. Hinshelwood  'Seventy-five Years of Kleinian Writing 1920-1995:  A Bibliography'

Mary Ashwin '"...Against all Other Virtue and Goodness": An Exploration of Envy in Relation to the Concept of Sin'

Envy has always had a bad press. Of all the negative traits or vices a person will own up to envy is the least likely one that they will acknowledge. They may well admit, with a deprecating grin, to being proud, greedy, covetous, lazy, bad-tempered or promiscuous; but most will be chary of professing their envy. Why is it that envy is so repugnant? I would suggest it is to do with the understanding, conscious or not, that envy is so bound up with a feeling of deficit. We envy what we do not have, not what we have, though psychologically it might be said we can envy what we have, but that we are unconscious of that asset. Impoverishment both real and imagined, material and psychological is implicit in envy.

The author presents an analysis of the Greek myth of Oedipus, after Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. This analysis considers that, in addition to an oracular destiny determined by deity, Oedipus realizes his own human destiny, which is the very conquest of the knowledge of his own identity. The author relates such a conquest to the psychoanalytic work, which enables each individual to get in touch with his deepest motivations and to develop a better self-consciousness. Key-words: Myth. Greek mythology. Psychoanalysis.

Contemporary pictures of man's violence and sexuality destroy boundaries between "me" and "not-me", fiction and reality, the portrayal and what is being portrayed, good and evil, living and dead, human and non-human, guarded by ancient taboos. This plays a part in our longing to transgress the ego's boundaries. Descriptions of violence and perversion may lead to traumatising intra-psychic consequences if they penetrate the skin ego or contribute to its dissolution. The presence of an intermediate Narrator, who is responsible for a certain psychic pre-processing, may, on the contrary, contribute to our leaving the role of the passive viewer and becoming an active witness. Such accounts can help us to mourn and to accept the loss of our infantile omnipotence.

The author was involved in some sessions of the deliberations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. He provides detailed reflections on the psychological, social and political processes involved in these sessions, in particular, what does not get said.

The established view of Hedda Gabler sees the play as a study of the frustration and despair engendered in the exceptional individual by a conventionalized society.  In this paper I present a psychoanalytic re-interpretation of the play which in certain respects inverts this received reading.  Insofar as it does so, however, my interpretation is intended not to cancel the received view but to play against it.  The first section of the paper is predominantly Freudian in approach.  The second section takes up certain Kleinian ideas which are broached in the first, and explores them more fully.   The third section exploits some of Winnicott's key concepts, especially as they have been elaborated by Christopher Bollas.  The paper seeks to enlarge our understanding of the
nature of Hedda Gabler's alienation and despair through a fresh study of the dynamic structure of the play as a whole.  I am also suggesting that Ibsen should be seen as a major precursor both of Freud and the object-relations tradition in psychoanalysis.

In this essay the author reflects on the issue of disclosure versus discretion raised by distressing and unflattering material about the subjects of psychoanalytic biography. He canvases the issue across a wide range of biographies but focuses on the life and work
of D. W. Winnicott.

The impact of British Psychoanalytic theory on our aesthetics and criticism has not been explored in any systematic way. This study aims to examine important theoretical developments within the British School of Psychoanalysis, and the contribution of these to psychoanalytic aesthetics - both within in the clinical and non-clinical domain. A critical overview of the classical Freudian aesthetics will form the background against which these subsequent developments in British psychoanalysis shall be viewed. This study aims to show that the dialogue between those clinicians such as Melanie Klein, Hannah Segal, Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, Donald Winnicott and Marion Milner, and non-practitioners such as Adrian Stokes, Anton Ehrenzweig, Peter Fuller, and Richard Wollheim, has been extraordinarily fruitful in addressing the nature of artistic creativity, aesthetics, and has significantly influenced critical writing, particularly in the domain of the visual arts. It will be argued that taken as a whole, their contributions represent the development of a uniquely British psychoanalytic aesthetic, to be distinguished from the American school of ego-psychology, on the one hand, and the French tradition of Psychoanalysis, on the other.

Douglas Kirsner reflects on writing Unfree Associations and sums up his conclusions from his research. It will be published in Free Associations no. 43.

This is a revised version of a short talk, designed to stimulate debate, delivered to the opening plenary session of the Tenth Annual Conference on Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere, November 1996. I consider what we have achieved in the decade and then discuss the concept of disappointment and the failures of process which have particularly troubled me. I also consider the concept of stoicism and offer my own shopping list of political tasks for the future.

This talk and one to come from Mike Rustin were presented as keynote addresses to the 10th anniversary conference: 'The State that Psychoanalysis is In'.

Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body London: Verso, 1995.

Anton Obholzer & Vega Zagier Roberts, eds., The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organisational Stress in the Human Services, London: Routledge, 1994. Pp. xx+224. £14.99

The author reflects in his characteristically broad and insightful way on the meaning of totalitarianism from the point of view of the Tavistock group relations tradition of Bion et al. This talk was given at a remarkable meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria on the occasion of the founding of a new Group Relations Institute in 1995. The essay will appear in a collection, - Group Relations: An Introduction- (Process Press, in press).

Final Plenary Discussion paper given at Ninth Annual Conference, November 18-19, l995, at the University of East London. This was written to provide an overview of the conference's deliberations and to reflect on the position of psychoanalysis in the broader culture.

A Paper for the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO) International Symposium, London, July 7-9, 1995. The author reflects on what psychoanalysis is and isn't and on its application to organizations. He opts for a rather less grand view than some other recent commentators. Accepted for publication in Free Associations.

The author reflects on some of the primitive processes displayed in internet communications and relationships. Accepted for Free Associations.

Paper presented to ninth annual conference on Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere', November 1995, University of East London and expanded for other venues. Under consideration for Free Associations.

This paper focuses on the recent academic emphasis on culturalist and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory within humanities departments in universities. It argues that an exclusive attention to Lacan's version of psychoanalysis as the study of language fails to make available to students the scope and richness of other areas of psychoanalytic theory and in particular, Object-Relations theory, which despite their theoretical incompatibilities, we can use eclectically to gain insight into cultural phenomena. It argues that an emphasis on language and signification to the exclusion of the body and intuitive, empathic ways of being and knowing experienced in the ore-Oedipal container-contained emotional relationship with the mother, represents a deodorising of what psychoanalysis and identity are all about. It suggests that academics who teach psychoanalytic theory who, in contrast to psychotherapists, often have no experience of the practice of psychoanalysis, may unconsciously use theory omnipotently to maintain a sense that we and culture are in control of who we are rather than, more realistically, a complex web of cultural, biological and unconscious factors. The paper concludes that given the enormous complexity of what we call 'realty', we cannot afford, defensively, to make some theories into the 'other' and thus reduce the eclectic range of potential insights with which to address this complexity.

While Bion's theory of basic assumptions in groups is well known, the linkages and correspondences between his theory and the Kleinian theory of development that he himself suggests - specifically, with the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, and the early origins of the Oedipus complex - have never been detailed. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to propose that there are direct "binocular" correspondences between Bion's baF and Klein's paranoid-schizoid positions, between baD and the depressive position, and between baP and the early Oedipus complex. It is argued that these correspondences are precisely what Bion came to understand when he alluded to them in his introduction to Experiences in Groups (1961). It is also suggested that attempting to detail the Kleinian correspondences with Bion's theories will stimulate further advances in the study of group life, and that such advances are not likely to occur in their absence.

This is a classic article, written by a psychologist trained in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge, who took up a critical stance and became a leading figure in the movement to humanize psychology and psychiatry. It is a fine example of an academic using all his training to think critically about the assumptions of his own discipline. It first appeared in The Human Context and was reprinted in a collection which was very influential in the student movement, Trevor Pateman, ed., Counter Course: An Handbook for Course Criticism, Penguin Education, 1972, pp. 51-81